Harsh punishment at primary school complaint

[Kasiapol28]

Hi there, sorry for the long thread...

I am after some advice on how to proceed with the school. My son ( 11 yo, year 6 ) is a bright boy and does well at school, even passing the grammar test for a local school. He has had 2 parents meeting so far this year and at everyone his teacher has praised him on behaviour and his work. No issues mentioned.

His heart is in sport, he plays football out of school and and this year he was chosen to be a sports ambassador at the school ( along with 60 others ) which meant he was able to to go to football tournaments, athletics..e.t.c .

Although the selection for teams is meant to be fair for everyone, the same 6 boys always get chosen and then the spares picked from the rest of the kids. These 6 boys are very close friends with my son.

However since January the school have been excluding him from certain sports events due to 'behaviour issues'.

On both occasions the school did not even bother to contact me to tell me that my son had been excluded from the events and at no point did they contact me to tell me they were having concerns with his behaviour. So obviously I was very taken aback by this. How can I work with him on his so called ' low disruption behaviour' as they called it , if I don't even know it is happening.

I wrote to the headteacher as I felt this was a very harsh punishment, to which he even replied that although he felt my child's behaviour was not extreme he was not following the school values and so the punishment stayed.

The reason he was not allowed to attend the latest event was because he was not tucking his shirt in, had not worn a tie on one occasion, and was causing ' low Distribution in class' year leaders words.

The issue is that they chose to announce who was going to the event on Monday of SATS week and the event was happening on that Friday which was also meant to be a celebration day at the school for finishing SATS with bouncy castles and all sorts. This caused a lot of necessary stress during what is a hard time for him during SATS week.

When my son heard the news that he was not picked and his group of friends were going to the event he was heartbroken. It has effected him all week and he has been in tears and feels left out and will not have anyone to share the celebrations with. I have not sent him into school today as he was so upset last night, seeing him in tears like that broke my heart, he is a good boy, doesn't swear at teachers or hurt kids, I just feel heartbroken for him.

Is it just me or does that seem rather extreme punishment ? Surely missing some lunch/ play or even a phone call to me so I could help him work at it would have been enough for this type of behaviour ?

In my opinion: I would not care.

I would talk to my child and tell him that such are consequences of the wrong behaviour- it is a good lesson. In the school I would say that before punishment they need warning. They are kids, when are they suppose to make errors in judgement than now?

Also, he is leaving his current school in 2 months time. F* it. It doesn't matter. Ensure he doesn't do that in his next school

He is close friends with most of the boys that are going and I heard them talking about it in their phone conversations and they were discussing recent times they had gotten in trouble.

Reading your replies OP, you literally don't care that he has been disruptive and annoying to a teacher and class of year 6 kids. He has potentially denied some of them extra support in class, while the teacher has a quiet word, or others a grammar school place. OP, get mortified and angry AT YOUR SON. He is a difficult child that will lose friends and lose the respect or liking of his secondary school teachers if this continues. Never mind a not being chosen for a jolly treat of a sports day. Start being a parent to your child and get him in line, respecting teachers and his headteacher. My mind boggles at the entitlement of parents.

One possibility would be a Behaviour Slip/Target Slip (different names in different schools). They do tend to be used at secondary rather than primary, however, since it's easier to to get a handle on how well someone has behaved when the school day is divided into periods.

Christ, you can't be serious. You've overheard them all chatting about times they've been in trouble and you still think the school are wrong? This is why teachers have such a hard job.

The more I find out about the situation, the less serious I think it is.

I understand that OP's son is disappointed but is it not the case that he simply hasn't made the cut? The school is represented at the sporting event by boys who have shown that they combine the best sports skills and consistently good behaviour. Someone was always going to be left out.

If OP's son had been given a place, someone else's son would have been disappointed. That's life, unfortunately.

Thank you for your reply, if you have read my previous notes I have very clearly stated many times that I do not condone his behaviour which is why I asked the school to advise me if he this behaviour returned. Which they did not. I would hardly say that he is denying anyone extra support, this is behaviour that is Low level, where the teacher may have to tell him to be quite or tuck in a shirt, that's hardly going to stop another child from gaining extra support.
Maybe re read the comments and get back to me

I think if other children are also being disruptive yet get to go to an event and my son does not that could be classed as singling out ?

Thank you.

It may be that your son is the one member of the group who is most consistently misbehaving.

However, it seems strange to me that boys would describe their bad behaviour over a telephone conversation, unless they were boasting about it. Unfair though this may be, the other possibility is that your son isn't as good at avoiding being caught as the other boys: if they are habitually behaving in exactly the same way and not being pulled up for it, their bad behaviour is either being ignored (which I doubt) or they're combining low-level disruption with being sly.

In one of your other comments, you allude to wondering what is causing your son to be involved in low-level disruption. Yes, each boy is responsible for his own behaviour, but it may be that your son's friendship group isn't a terribly positive influence.

I had similar with my DS, he was bored after completing work so used to do things like take the rubber off the end of the pencil. I had no issue with a teacher telling DS off but it annoyed me that they hadn’t said anything so we could help.
Our DS did stop doing the annoying things but mainly because a brilliant new teacher started and gave stretch work to those more able pupils. Made the world of difference.

I'll just add to my previous comment: if boys are discussing bad behaviour over the phone, then it seems to me that they are entertaining themselves by winding up their teacher.

OP, you have a bigger problem than you realised. You're distressed because your son is being separated from his friends for one particular event. It seems to me that your son needs to be separated from them: your son and his friends are a bad influence on one another.

The teachers will know the difference between kids being kids and some thing more. I’m an ex teacher and I can see the potential pattern of behaviour, you saying you’re supportive of school but not when it comes to your child. Carry on like this and in yr 11 you will be asking for support with behaviour from school and be upset that he is underachieving. Parents who work with the school end up with happy high achieving children.

Child who mess about at this age either have the right support and grow out of it or they stuck with the same behaviour.

If this isn't nipped in the bud now he'll have a shock in secondary.

It's good when able pupils are given extension work. However, there's a difference between fiddling about through boredom and the kind of behaviour that boys discuss over the phone.

Given that your son's fiddling and so on stopped when he was given extension work sazzy5, it's clear that the problem in his case was boredom after completing work. That's very different from the kind of scenario that schools sometimes have where a parent tries to excuse bad behaviour by claiming that their child was bored - not what you're doing and not what the OP has been doing.

I'm pleased that your son is now being stretched the way that he should be.

I think school should have communicated to you earlier that that he was not behaving well, to give you an opportunity to talk to him about it and support improvement. So I'm with you on that one and if it worked then it may mean his behaviour improved and he got to go on the sports team so thats a win win for everyone.

If you complain to school I would focus on the above point.

The actual consequence of his poor behaviour is fair enough and tbh at 11 he should know how to behave including how to follow school uniform rules. Let this be a lesson for him and it is timely with him soon going to secondary school and will face much more severe consequences for disruptive behaviour there I imagine.

Your son will have had a lot of warnings.
Are you really expecting to be told every time your son's behaviour isn't what it should be? When do you think the teachers are going to do that? As an example, I teach in up to 4 different classes every day. There are probably one or two, sometimes three children exhibiting the sort of behaviour you are talking about. Let's say it takes 15 minutes to make a phone call home, that's finding the number, going to a room where there is a school phone to call from, speaking to the parent, making a record of the conversation. If you make even 2 of the calls a day, that it is a big chunk out of the teacher's time.
You have been told about his behaviour last term, he will certainly have been told several times, and he is not being excluded, he is not being chosen to represent his school. There is a difference.
If he is as bright as you say, he will certainly be aware of the consequences of his behaviour, and he has chosen not to comply, thus demonstrating a lack of respect for his teachers and classmates. It's no good you and him complaining that it's not fair, he needs to understand that he is not more special than anyone else, and that he can't keep expecting exceptions to made because he is high achieving.

How about the school supporting and working with me and my child ? We are both in this together and they have failed from there side.

He's talking in class, not struggling academically or socially. This isn't a "support and work with the parents and child" scenario, it's a "tell the child off, then warn of consequences, then follow through on those consequences if necessary" situation.

This is one of those threads where I'd really like to hear the other side of the story...

Yes I am expecting to be told when my child is behaving differently at school, if you read my earlier posts this is behaviour that happened on one occasion in Jan and then has not happened since until the last couple of weeks. I completely expect the school to contact me if his behaviour changes, there maybe something going on with him that we need to get to the bottom off ? If my sons behaviour was consistently bad through out the year then perhaps a phone call all the time would not be beneficial but I suspect there would have been other measures put in place for constant bad behaviour. This is not what this is.

Why on earth would you allow your son a day off school because he's upset at not being allowed to disrupt the class?!
Teachers just give up and leave because of this sort of denial.
Low level disruption was recently surveyed on TeacherTalk as being accountable for over 25% of each lesson being wasted. That's like an entire year of wasted time in Secondary school for each kid who actually behaves, just because of a small minority of low level disrupters. FFS.
From experience it is low level disruption-constant chit chat, turning around, throwing things, prodding at others-that ultimately makes a lot of teachers abandon the profession because disruptive kids prevent actual teaching from happening. It's heartbreaking-most kids sitting there like owls waiting to learn, rolling their eyes because it's the same few kids over and over who bring the lesson to a halt by arsing around with unsuitable behaviour for the classroom.

They do it again and again because their parents give them the message that it's unimportant or trivial or a special entitlement. And they do it again and again because their parents pander to their indignation if they receive any consequence.
Yeah, you are that parent, sorry.

Again, I'm wondering about the fact that the OP's son and his friends were discussing their behaviour over the phone. Something is amiss here.

Given that these boys will soon be moving to secondary, there's the opportunity for a fresh start.

With regard to sporting events, the chances are that OP's son will have to get used to being a sub, given that the P.E. Dept. will be selecting from a much larger pool of talent. He's either going to have get used to disappointment or - more positively - to use this experience to drive himself to improve his performance.

It’s an even bigger chunk out of the teacher’s day if they’re continually dealing with disruptive behaviour that could have been stopped much earlier by more effective communication between the school and parents.

This low-level disruption is the worst. If he were violent or swearing at teachers, at least it would be dealt with properly. This kind of behaviour is never grounds for serious punishment, but it should be: the poor rest of the class (and teacher!) who have to put up with this bullshit.

He was not upset about not being allowed to disrupt the class. That's a bit silly.

He was upset because he had not been warned that his consequences would be that severe and therefore he did not understand the severity of his behaviour I suppose.

Just before SATS they had started a new level of punishment in preparation for Year 7, which is great I think, but obviously being alot more picky then usual at the behaviour exhibited in class.